Shadows Wrapped
by Xenoglossy
Summary: Even if one is not concious, actions still have consequences. It was a muddy version of reality- Tarak Nor from Garak's POV.


**PRE FIC RANTINGS AND A SPRINKLE OF DISCLAIMER:** Wow. Never been here before. ^ ^ Upon watching the 'Tarock Nor' episode of DS9 with the deliciously insane-homocidal Garak, whislt being sick and half asleep, a fanfic hit me. You all know how it is. You're sitting there either doing your homework, trying to sleep or attempting to do something otherwise very important when all of a sudden your muse grabs hold of you viciously and holds a gun to your head demanding that you write.  
So here I am writing a Deep Space Nine fanfic. Whee.  
And the chorus goes like this: "I don't own this and you already know that. Lalalalalalala!" I'm sure it'll be a great hit! ==================================================================== Shadows Wrapped  
Izzy Girl Garak remembered clearly what it felt like. The slight shudder in his spine, the numbing of his fingers, the widening of his eyes as his shoulders tensed up and his arms stiffened. He let the phaser drop from his limp hand and stared at the body as it bled lifeforce across the icy-cold chrome plating of the abandoned space station's floor. He breathed in once, sharp and short breaths, and it was a while until he exhaled. Something clicked. It wasn't concious, otherwise his overactive common sense mechanism might have picked up on it and immedietly discarded the sickening emotion. No, it was something primal and very natural, locked away in the psyche of all his people and harkening back to the days before Cardassians remembered their history well enough to record it. The thrill of the hunt- the joy of the kill. Finally, time unfroze and he blinked, licking his lips dryly and rising completely from the stasis tube. He bent over and retrieved the weapon, studiously choosing to ignore the cold, dead body of his fallen brother no more than three feet to his left. As his hands cupped the phaser, it was all he could do to stop the scene from replaying in his head over and over again. His fingers twisted around the hilt and trigger and he tightened his grip, inhaling the musty air, rich with the scent of new blood... - - - "Do you think it's wrong to enjoy killing somebody?" Kira spun her head sharply to regard Garak with a contemptuous gaze. She was dirty, disheveled, exhausted and fustration danced in her firery eyes, "What the hell makes you ask that at a time like this!?" Garak shrugged and checked the settings on his phaser for about the thousandth time in the last hour, "Just making conversation, Major." Kira rolled her eyes and turned away from him, muttering irritatedly as her eyes scanned their surroundings, searching for signs of Damar's return, "Yeah, well it's really not the time." Not one to be put off so easily, Garak continued speaking, his attention still seemingly focused on his weapon adjustments, "I was just wondering if you've ever really enjoyed killing someone." Kira froze up. She was ridgid for a few moments, then relaxed as she sighed and leaned back into the rocky wall of the outcropping near the entrance of the Damar's base they were sandwhiched into. She rested her arm across her knee and twisted her mouth, "How is it that you always pick exactly the right moment to bring up an awkward subject?" "Just call it a talent, Major." "Learned in what profession?" "Which do you think? Tailors must always keep their customers on their toes with the latest gossip afterall." Kira almost chuckled. Almost, then she acquired a somewhat bitter expression, "I've never enjoyed killing, per say. But I don't think there's a Bajoran alive who didn't feel satisfaction when a Cardassian died during the Occupation." she turned her gaze on Garak and turned the tip of her lip upwards wryly, "No offense." "None taken Major. I understand now exactly what you suffered through, as does the rest of Cardassia." The Major blinked at that comment and allowed her gaze to flicker downwards, which wasn't at all like her for Kira was neither demure nor was she unattentive. A moment later her vision was turned towards the horizen again and she asked, "I'll ask you again, Garak, what the hell made you ask that?" "Oh, I don't know really. I was just thinking..." - - - The officer gasped, a strangled half-noise that ended with a gurgle as he crumpled to the floor. His mouth opened a closed dryly as if he were trying to speak, but the words were forever caught in his throat. His eyes filmed over and his limbs convulsed. Garak took in these details as slowly as the change was coming over him. He'd never noticed before, how beautiful a humanoid creature could be in those few moment before death. They were at their most natural, then- desperate and passionate and savage, their minds focused on survival and nothing else. It was a frightening and dark place to be, but a riveting event to behold. Garak imagined he could see the boy's death, not only physically but spiritually. The sudden intimacy he'd discovered with death granted him vision and with it he could see the spiderweb-like lifeforce of all those who resided on the space station. Already, most of the bonds were broken, hanging loosely from the weave, discarded and rotting already as they hollowed out. One was dwindling, this boy. Slowly it fell and detwined itself from the others, at the mercy of the great void. Only three remained now, but Garak could see already the form his own thread was taking on, mutating and molding itself as he became the bringer of death's kiss. He was like a spider, controlling and spinning the lives and choosing when to cut him off. He wondered if all great murderers felt like this at the beginning, with their pulse racing and their mind working in ways never imagined by ordinary human beings. He could see it clearly now- murderers were not lunatics, but geniuses. Rather than being madmen, they were the sanest in a world rapidly falling apart in a mess of goverment bureaucricies and law. This was the way it should be, survival of the fittest and life in it's purest, most natural state. Only by doing this would people be able to overcome their fears and weaknesses programmed in by orginized 'safe' society. Garak knew because he was living proof. He had travelled five decks by conduit without feeling even the slightest press of claustrophobia. The officer finally gave up his pathetic game of clinging and accepted his last breath. His eyes rolled back in his head and he went at once stiff and limp. Garak took a few steps backwards, hitting the opposite wall of the narrow corrider. He laughed. - - - "... rak? Garak, can you hear me?" The Cardassian opened his eyes blearily, then closed them instantly against the blaring light of Deep Sapce Nine's sickbay. Why Dr. Bashir insisted on keeping those overhead lights so intense, he could never understand. When the station was Cardassian run the lighting in a room never exceeded more than forty watts combined. "Garak, can you hear me? Garak, wake up dammnit, you're making my job more difficult than it has to be!" "Why thank you, Julian. I do so appreciate your concern for me." he tried opening his eyes again. This time the light wasn't so harsh and he was able to drink in the blurry image of Dr. Bashir as he fussed about the bedside, a suspicious instrument clenched in his left hand. Garak attempted to prop himself up on his elbows, but was thwarted by a sharp, violent pain in his chest. He fell backwards with a loud grunt and Julian laughed. "Careful there, Garak. You might be interested to know that you currently have five broken ribs. I don't think you'll be pulling any stunts like you did at Tarok Nor for quite a while." Garak groaned and rested an arm across his tender chest area. He was seriously considering filing an official complaint with Captain Sisko about the sub-par bedside manners he was recieving from his dear friend Julian Bashir when he finallt processed what the doctor had been saying. He raised an eye ridge and regarded his friend curiously. "What's this about Tarok Nor? Did something happen on the station?" Julian's face darkened and he swallowed gravely, shooting Garak a severe look, "You mean you really don't remember?" - - - Garak's fingers moved quickly and effieciently, dexterous from his years of weaving thread into the hems of pants and dresses. He eyes sunk in the details and imprinted them in his memory, that part of his brain sharpened from his years and weaving lies and deciet into the minds of gulliable traitors and enemies of the state. Despite this, he tied to knots slowly and deliberately, enjoying the way the rope closed around the dead skin, kneading it and pressing it in until the stagnent veins pushed against the surface. If the victim had been living, Garak observed, the vein might have throbbed but the dead flesh only molded itself around the noose without complaint. And let them become misshappen! These souless carcasses were no longer of his concern anyways! There was only one that mattered- only one that was truly a worthy opponent. A fellow particpant in this strange world of death and decay. Only one other on this entire station that had seen through eyes unflinching the mechanisms of mortality in full swing. He would understand. "Let's play a game." Garak murmered, catching the dead man's absent gaze, unfocused but still present if one was to imagine it, beneath white-covered irises, "He'll have until the count of three hundred. What do you think? A reasonable number, don't you agree?" the corpse was silent, as usually the dead are. Garak chuckled, "Yes. I think that may be just right." He turned and surveyed his work, proudly noting the strategic placements of the hanging bodies, limp but stiff in their inherent lifelessness. There were not many of them, but they hung in such a way it seemed that death overbore the display room of the station. The shadows caught all the wrong angles on the corpses and it seemed as if they were moving. Swaying and dancing to some strange, gothic tune unfathomable to any who were living. Garak nodded cheerfully and tucked his phaser away into his belt-pouch. No such weapons would be used this time. No, this time it would be a clean kill... - - - Assasination was different, Garak decided. When you're hidden and wrapped in shadows with a pocket phaser and a set of orders running through your mind it's very different. It's planned, calculated and not even your idea in the first place. Most importantly, it's condoned. Even better than that was a vial of poisin slipped into their wine or chemical weapons lined into their bedsheets. Sometimes, you would be the one giving the orders. No direct killing required. Garak had never looked forwards to assasination, per say, but when the deed was carried out and done with he never felt like a murderer. Perhaps it was embedded in an old Cardassian belief that killing is perfectly well justifed as long as it is government approved. _'Maybe I'm just growing soft in my old age'_, Garak sighed, sitting down at his narrow desk and leafing through a pile of back orders and plastic wrapped star fleet uniforms, along with civilian wear. A shudder passed through his body as his fingers brushed the sharp edges of the crisp notepaper, scrawled over in the messy, unpracticed handwriting of his clients. Something about those absolute edges traced the dark lines in his blurry memory and his movements clenched up. Yes, there was a phenomenal difference between impersonal killing on the job and that mad, sweaty sort of bloodlust he had experienced on Tarok Nor. He sighed upon reaching a note pinned to a rather hopelessly torn engineering tunic. An unfortunate accient in a Jeffery's Tube, the officer had written, as if it was the worst of their problems. Garak pulled open one of the shallow drawers along the top of his desk and sifted through the needles. "Well, Elim," he said aloud, fingering a particularily worn instument, "I supposed the one thing you can learn from this entire experience is that you're never as jaded as you think you are." And with shuddering hands, he began to mend. +end **POST FIC REFLECTIONS:** I rushed a bit near the end there. I hope it wasn't too apparent. I really had fun writing this but I can't decide whether it was too dark or not dark enough. It annoyed me a bit since I wrote the first half a month ago when the episode actually AIRED. As it is now, Garak hasn't been on DS9 for a while, which makes me quite cross because I was just beginning to appreciate the fact he was in almost every single episode for a three week run. He was getting more screen time than Ben. It was uncanny.  
Anyways, I liked this enough that I might chance another foray into DS9 fanficion. I've had a couple other no so atypical ideas floating around in my head for a while now, it's just hard to get them out on my keyboard. Oh well, you're all fanficiton writers too, you know what I mean.  
Um, and yeah.  
2003 Jenn "Sparky" Young  
aka Izzy Girl  
aka Cephied Variable  
cephied_variable@yoishness.zzn.com  
  
ff.n ID#12217 (Izzy Girl)  
fp.n ID#12217 (Cephied Variable) 


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